Questions about example sentences with, and the definition and usage of "Piecemeal"

A:

There was a piecemeal taking back of what had been given.

They were not assailed by a great religious movement, but destroyed piecemeal by the revolt of tribes and districts.

In September 1825 Ibrahim, at the order of the sultan, had joined Reshid before the town; piecemeal the outlying forts and defences now fell, until the garrison, reduced by starvation and disease, determined to hazard all on a final sortie.

The account of the compound simply sets itself taken piecemeal as equivalent to itself taken as aggregate.

I amused myself one winter day with sliding this piecemeal across the pond, nearly half a mile, skating behind with one end of a log fifteen feet long on my shoulder, and the other on the ice; or I tied several logs together with a birch withe, and then, with a longer birch or alder which had a hook at the end, dragged them across